Its not just moser/pwcc...more trimmers exposed

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by griffon512

"Someday, either a new grading company or an existing grading company will come out with a process to remove the humans from the grading process and use optical scanning and CMM tools to measure card size. They might provide this service as an upgraded service alongside human opinions which will be viewed as less reliable but perhaps ok for lower priced, lower grade commons as an authentication option."

Size among vintage cards should not be the sole determinant of whether a card is trimmed. There are many oversized vintage cards that are trimmed and many undersized vintage cards that are not trimmed versus a given set's standard size. Obviously an undersized card is more likely to be trimmed than a non-undersized card. The fact that all the statements above are true means that technology alone can not determine whether size was reduced post-production. That means that the likelihood a grading company will introduce a grading technology that will change many numerical grades to authentic based on size -- and presumably guarantee the loss in value of the card -- is extremely low. Common sense and anecdotal evidence reinforces that a large percentage of high grade pre-WWII cards are altered. That should not be a surprise to any knowledgeable person in the hobby. There will always be a cloud of uncertainty over the hobby, as is the case with most collectibles. It's up to each person how much they want to rely on faith versus certainty in what they buy. Until now -- and I don't see this changing much -- faith has trumped certainty.

+1

And it's my opinion that the trimmed cards are being stretched prior to trimming, so they're being trimmed down to what the card should actually measure. A computer or machine will never be able to distinguish the difference between a card that's been trimmed and one that hasn't based on the size of the card alone. It goes back to what I was saying just a couple posts above. People want to rely on someone or something else to do it for them because they're too damn laze to educate themselves. Sad really.